What's the worst thing you have ever witnessed first-hand happen on live tv?

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

For me it would have to be Christian Eriksson collapsing at the euros in 2021

The British Soldiers being dragged from their car and killed,after taking a wrong turn and ending up at a IRA funeral.

But she did ‘look beautiful in the flame’ 🥺

I don't think I've ever seen something terrible happen live. I was at school when 9/11 happened.

We were living on the Cumbrian coast when Lockerbie happened. I was only a toddler, but I apparently (along with my parents) saw a huge flash of light in the sky when it happened. Didn't understand what was going on, of course.

I was also at one end of the road while Derrick Bird was shooting someone at the other end. If I had chosen to walk straight ahead instead of turning off down a shortcut, I could well have been a victim, but again, I didn't know what was going on as it was happening. I'd never heard a gunshot in real life, and it was the last thing I would have expected a loud bang to be!

Exactly so. Thats why I remember Senna’s death so clearly, my DP at the time was really shaken up that we had literally watched a man die on live TV.

Social media has a lot to answer for sometimes and I really wish people wouldn’t idly pick over terrible events as if they were entertainment.

Agree, I don't get why people post things like that

Tommy Cooper dying on stage was the first terrible thing I saw on tv.

9/11, like so many others. Was at my desk when an American work contact phoned me and told me to switch on a TV. Turned it on and saw aftermath of first tower attack, then second tower live. So shocking it seemed unreal, like a disaster film.

I know from studying negligence that the coverage of Hillsborough was quite graphic. There were court cases and negligence for psychological injury and whether there was a difference relatives watching from home, knowing where their relatives were sitting or being in a different stand at the ground. Just studying them was horrible. Knew that whatever the law actually was they needed the support and the government didn’t or couldn’t step up.

I was never a Pulp fan but JC went up massively in my estimation after this. Good on him.

I thought it was gratuitous and unnecessary. Just very coarse and vulgar.

Mine too. Although I was a pulp fan :)

Bob Mortimer as well. Though from his autobiography even the Police were on side- they only arrested JC to get him out of the building and away from MJ’s security who were more of a danger. BM’s lawyer skills were not needed 😂

No I thought it was a clear and appropriate response to MJ’s performative nonsense.

he put into one action what many wanted to say.

9/11. I was alone in Italy, my husband having flown to the US the day before. A friend phoned and told me to turn on the TV, and I did, just in time to see the plane hit the second tower. The only thing to drink in the flat was sweet vermouth. I had to buy a bottle the next day to replace it.

If everyone made similar ‘clear and appropriate responses’ to everything they didn’t like, society would not function.

People are entitled to think and feel whatever they like. Not everyone has to approve of everything. But it was every bit as self indulgent of JC to react in the way he did, as MJ’s act itself was self indulgent.

Re Hillsborough, we were living overseas and watched live on TV and I remember the newspapers the next day had some pretty graphic pictures, just horrific. One of the best dramas I’ve seen on TV was Hillsborough, written by Jimmy McGovern and starred Ricky Tomlinson, brilliant piece of drama and really seemed to capture so much of what went wrong before, during and after.

I couldn't love Bob more 😍

I never watched it on tv, unfortunately i had too view the whole video when i arrived in Northern Ireland. It was beyond harrowing.

I am a bit coarse and vulgar, perhaps that's why my not-very-delicate sensibilities were buoyed rather than wounded.

I did, however, find MJ's performance vulgar. Re-watching it still leaves a very bad taste in one's potty mouth.

Sorry to go on about it, but MJ was one of those global megastars that seemed to be untouchable at the time, and I, as a young teen, thought it was amazing that someone had the balls to call him out.
I, for one, think MJ was a bad 'un & him being so untouchable meant he got away with a lot.

Neither covered themselves in glory on that evening, but for totally different reasons.

You could argue JC uncovered himself ingloriously.

For me, he was the worse of the two.

Wow- I knew that Bob had stepped up to represent Jarvis but didn’t know this! How interesting.
I was young so of course thought it was hilarious and entirely justified as it unfolded live on prime time telly. My teen loves Pulp and on learning about this incident JC and BM were immediately elevated to folk hero status.
I don’t feel the teens have much time for MJ.

I felt like I saw the towers collapse live after school, but I first heard of it at netball practice post-school, then home was over an hour away.

I actually lived near a specialist manufacturer of emergency equipment, and MOD vehicles drove past us collecting supplies to be expedited to NYC.

I think rolling news was a lot less coordinated than it was these days, so the replays seemed to be live.

(But it reminds me of the reality show where they pretended to send people into space - the participants said that because they genuinely thought they'd been sent to space, they knew how it must actually feel to see the earth from space.)

I cried the other day watching the footage of the second plane hitting, because one day my son will see it, and we'll have to explain what happened.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis
I cried the other day watching the footage of the second plane hitting, because one day my son will see it, and we'll have to explain what happened.

It will be sad but it will be history not the absolute shock and horror. (I realised when chatting to colleagues who were very young.) Then I thought about things that happened before I was born like Aberfan. I find that very sad but don’t feel the same as for 9/11 or others from an age when I understood. I don’t think I feel it like others on this thread.

With 9/11, I seem to remember listening to the radio at work and they reported a plane had hit the twin towers. I don't think much detail was given but we got the idea it was a very small plane that had accidentally hit. When the second plane was reported we put the tv on, but we didn't watch it live as it happened.
Grenfell Tower was harrowing to watch as it happened

Bradford stadium fire did unfold in real time on TV. Like Hillsborough it was one where banks of TVs in the local Radio Rentals/ Dixon's (now pc world) were unwittingly showing it and crowds just gathered to stare in horror whilst they were out at the shops on a Saturday afternoon.

They showed it again on the recent BBC 2 documentary